Wednesday, December 5, 2007

John Barclay Righting Wright on Paul and Imperialism

Update: Michael Pahl clarifies his position in the comments.

I have it on the authority of two witnesses (Mark Goodacre and my colleague, Martin Culy) that the "academic highlight" of this year's SBL was the takedown of Tom Wright by John Barclay in a session on Paul and Empire. Knowing something about the personal dynamics makes the exchange more interesting: John Barclay is Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham; Tom Wright happens to be the Bishop of Durham and one of Barclay's former teachers.

I listened to Andy Rowell's mp3 recording of Barclay's paper and Wright's response on my way to pick up my parents from the Regina airport on Saturday night, and on the return trip Tuesday morning. (Those interested in baby pictures may click here.)

To Wright's claim that Paul's letters contain coded messages that subvert the Roman Empire, Barclay replied that Tom is "hallucinating." Whereas Tom and the "Paul and Politics Coalition" see an emperor with no clothes wandering unobserved through Paul's epistles, Barclay sees no emperor at all. Barclay points out that Paul had no reason to write in code in private letters to small communities. Since he expected persecution for the sake of the Gospel, he would not have hesitated to name names if he considered the empire important enough to merit his direct attention. Barclay comments that Philo and Josephus did not hesitate to remark that the emperor was not worthy of worship. He also mentions that the imperial cult was a variegated thing that developed differently at different times and in different locations. To this I might add that although there is evidence for a temple to Augustus in Pergamum as early as AD 14, most of our archaeological evidence for the cult dates from the second century AD (see the "Turkey Travelogue" posts on Pergamum and Ephesus [here and here] for pictures and a bit more detail).

According to Barclay's reading of Paul, Christ's death and resurrection transformed reality, rendered traditional ethnic distinctions obsolete, and exposed the real enemies as things like Flesh, Sin and Death. These enemies are at work in the empire, to be sure, but also in the church. Paul's truly subversive move was in refusing to accord the empire and the imperial cult the attention it seemed to deserve.

Over at the stuff of earth, Michael Pahl lays out evidence for anti-Imperial elements in the Thessalonian correspondence, including Paul's use of the phrase "peace and security", and concludes that Barclay overstated his case: "the evidence from 1 Thessalonians (and even 2 Thessalonians and Philippians) thus seems to reflect Paul’s deliberate mirroring of that imperial propaganda in letters to predominantly non-Jewish recipients from that region, at times apparently in direct contrast to those imperial messages."

Barclay does, however, allow that some of the characters in Paul's drama of salvation speak with a Roman accent (here Barclay mentioned "peace and security" explicitly), but he insists they are not identifiably Roman. Paul never names names (except to mention those of Caesar's household); he refers to many gods and many lords, but never explicitly refers to any specific Greco-Roman deity.

Like Pahl, Wright makes a big deal of Paul's use of political language also used in imperial propaganda such as Lord, Savior and Gospel. I wonder whether this presses the language too far. After all, we use political language all the time without intending thereby to subvert the state.

More important, Wright rejected Barclay's attempt to distinguish between what Paul intended and how Paul's audience may have received what Paul said. In my judgement, the distinction Barclay makes has some merit, but I think it may detract from the real issue. Both Wright and Barclay acknowledge that the empire and imperial cult loom large in the background. Both admit that the political implications of Paul's Gospel are deeply subversive--for Wright because Paul attacked it head-on, for Barclay because Paul refused to acknowledge its significance.

The crucial thing is how Paul addresses the implications of his Gospel, and this is where I think Wright goes wrong and Barclay's paper is dead-on: Focusing too insistently on the Gospel's subversion of empire misses the fact that Paul casts conflict in terms of good and evil, light and darkness. To be sure the empire is there in the background; Paul's audience could not miss it. But to place the background in the foreground is to distort Paul's message. It is not simply empire that Paul opposes but the forces of evil at work everywhere, including in the church.

______________________________This, by the way, is the same mistake that my Ph.D. supervisor, Stephen Westerholm, identified in some representatives of the New Perspective (including Wright): The issue Paul addressed in Galatians was the inclusion of Gentiles in God's people (so Wright, Dunn, etc.), but we must attend to the way Paul responded to the social issue theologically. When Paul addresses the issue he does not simply exclude boundary markers or condemn pride in one's ethnic distinctives, he talks about justification by faith apart from works as the means by which Jew and Gentile may be reconciled in Christ.

3 comments:

Thanks for this, David. You state:"Like Pahl, Wright makes a big deal of Paul's use of political language also used in imperial propaganda such as Lord, Savior and Gospel. I wonder whether this presses the language too far. After all, we use political language all the time without intending thereby to subvert the state."

That would be an appropriately cautious conclusion - if there were no other factors to consider. However, in my blog post I note two or three other factors that also must be considered: 1) Paul uses these specific words to people living in a location surrounded by imperial propaganda and some anti-imperial sentiment; 2) he was specifically remembered as speaking in that region in such a way that he could be charged with treasonous anti-imperialism; 3) in at least one instance Paul uses one of these imperial phrases explicitly as a quotation of what other people in the Thessalonian context are saying ("peace and security"), i.e. it is not simply Paul using the language analogously about Christ but as a quotation of those who are in fact opponents of the Thessalonian Christians facing judgment in the Day of the Lord. Thus it is not simply the use of those words and phrases that makes me see some sort of "anti-imperialism" in 1 Thessalonians - it is those words used in these ways in that context. This is not simply like using the language of "King Jesus" as a helpful metaphor for people living under a monarchy; it is more like using that language for those people in a region with a history of anti-monarchist tendencies, saturated with pro-monarchist propaganda, and then describing those who employ that propaganda as liable to divine destruction at the eschaton.

Still, having re-emphasized my points, I should also re-emphasize my conclusion - I do not think that Paul was therefore necessarily anti-Caesar or anti-Empire per se, but rather viewed those as the specific instances of "the powers of the world" in the Thessalonian context, and it's the "powers of the world" (among other forces) that face judgment and defeat in the wake of the crucified and risen Jesus.

Thanks for the helpful comment, Michael. The main reason I quoted from your post is that I am not convinced Barclay undervalued the evidence in the way you suggest. I am happy to grant that the historical context would shape how Paul's language was heard. It is hard to deny that 1 Thess 5:3 is intentional anti-imperial language, but I don't think Barclay would deny this since he addressed this passage directly in his talk. In any case, your conclusion sounds very much like Barclay's own.

Again, I find Barclay's attempt to distinguish between Paul's intention and the reception of his letters unhelpful. It would be better to distinguish between the social context of the Aegean and how Paul addressed issues that arose in that context theologically.

About Me

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
- Robert Frost, "Two Tramps in Mud Time"